Grist » Tyler Falkhttp://grist.org
Environmental News, Commentary, AdviceSun, 02 Aug 2015 20:26:52 +0000enhourly1http://wordpress.com/http://1.gravatar.com/blavatar/330e84b0272aae748d059cd70e3f8f8d?s=96&d=http%3A%2F%2Fs2.wp.com%2Fi%2Fbuttonw-com.png » Tyler Falkhttp://grist.org
BP, other European polluters, pump money into Senate campaignshttp://grist.org/article/2010-10-25-bp-european-polluters-pump-money-into-u-s-senate-campaigns/?utm_source=syndication&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=feed_tylerfalk
http://grist.org/article/2010-10-25-bp-european-polluters-pump-money-into-u-s-senate-campaigns/#commentsTue, 26 Oct 2010 01:01:24 +0000http://www.grist.org/article/2010-10-25-bp-european-polluters-pump-money-into-u-s-senate-campaigns/]]>There’s a high conversion rate for European-funded climate skeptics running for the Senate.Photo: Ben KlemmThe way things have been going in the U.S. Senate, you wouldn’t think enemies of climate change legislation (and of the science itself) would need any extra help. However, an analysis [PDF] by Climate Action Network Europe found that big European polluters such as BP are helping fund climate zombies running for the Senate.

The CANE report said the companies, including BP, BASF, Bayer and Solvay, which are some of Europe’s biggest emitters, had collectively donated $240,200 to senators who blocked action on global warming – more even than the $217,000 the oil billionaires and Tea Party bankrollers, David and Charles Koch, have donated to Senate campaigns. [Guardian]

The biggest giver was the German pharmaceutical company Bayer, who gave $108,100 to senators. And the largest beneficiary wasn’t even the infamous climate denier James Inhofe (R-Okla.), but Democratic Sen. Blanche Lincoln (Ark.) who pulled in $47,500 from seven of the eight companies. [Politico]

A ploy named sue: The Center for Biological Diversity has sued the Interior Department to reinstate the moratorium on deepwater drilling in the Gulf. It argues that more study is needed on the long-term impact of the disaster. [The Hill]

Know the drill: The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management is looking at a plan which would enable it to track data from offshore oil rigs in real time instead of relying solely on on-site inspections. [Houston Chronicle]

Craptacular: A Sacramento-based company is turning sewage into biodegradable plastic. [Discovery News]

No-land: Greenland is melting at a record pace this year, 25 to 50 percent higher than normal. [Climate Progress]

Filed under: Climate & Energy, Politics]]>http://grist.org/article/2010-10-25-bp-european-polluters-pump-money-into-u-s-senate-campaigns/feed/0euro-europe-money-flickr-ben-klemm-500.jpgeurosMemo to KFC: Using butts to sell breasts isn't new — just a new lowhttp://grist.org/article/food-2010-10-18-memo-to-kfc-using-butts-to-sell-breasts-double-down/?utm_source=syndication&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=feed_tylerfalk
http://grist.org/article/food-2010-10-18-memo-to-kfc-using-butts-to-sell-breasts-double-down/#commentsTue, 19 Oct 2010 01:42:51 +0000http://www.grist.org/article/food-2010-10-18-memo-to-kfc-using-butts-to-sell-breasts-double-down/]]>KFC is at it again. First the fast-food chain used the tiring stereotype that eating lots of meat is manly, to promote its belligerent Double Down chicken sandwich — two chicken breasts with cheese and bacon in the middle. Now, in a much more troubling display of female objectification, it is paying women from Indiana University $500 to wear sweatpants with “Double Down” printed across the butt and hand out $5 coupons promoting the sandwich, according to AP.

A KFC spokesperson, Rick Maynard, makes a lame case for the campaign, telling AP, “The idea of branding T-shirts and sweat pants is certainly not [new]. Apparel companies and sororities have been doing that for years.”

Rick, you’re right — it’s not new, but this is why it’s wrong.

KFC’s new campaign perpetuates the thinking in our country that meat is “meat,” a thing to be consumed without thinking about where it comes from — whether it’s a piece of chicken breast or a woman’s butt. In this mindset, neither animal nor female flesh are living things, don’t need to be respected, and can be used freely for our consumption.

It is this thinking that allows us to raise more than 8 billion chickens a year in unspeakably crowded, inhumane conditions, feeding them antibiotics that make them grow abnormally fast.

This is nothing new for fast food and meat advertising. Women have been linked to meat in objectifying and oppressive ways for years. (For a good resource, check out The Sexual Politics of Meat by Carol J. Adams.) And this will undoubtedly continue until the day we treat our animals with respect rather than a cheap, quick fix of gluttonous enjoyment.

That is why this is more about college women running around with “sexy” across the seat of their sweatpants, Rick. It’s about a society that doesn’t think twice when they’re honking their horns at the college women standing on the corner with KFC signs. Or when they’re eating a double chicken-breast sandwich for just $5.

As a public-policy professor told the New York Times in a story about Maryland’s polluting chicken industry, “there are consequences to being able to sell skinless, boneless chicken breast for just over $2 per pound when virtually no other protein source with so little fat is that cheap.”

KFC, not only is your sandwich gross, but so is your advertising.

Filed under: Business & Technology, Food]]>http://grist.org/article/food-2010-10-18-memo-to-kfc-using-butts-to-sell-breasts-double-down/feed/0KFC_doubledown.jpgIndiana U co-edsWhite House criticized for blocking oil spill numbershttp://grist.org/article/2010-10-07-morning-grist-white-house-c-blocked-worst-case-oil-spill-numbers/?utm_source=syndication&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=feed_tylerfalk
http://grist.org/article/2010-10-07-morning-grist-white-house-c-blocked-worst-case-oil-spill-numbers/#commentsThu, 07 Oct 2010 21:40:59 +0000http://www.grist.org/article/2010-10-07-morning-grist-white-house-c-blocked-worst-case-oil-spill-numbers/]]>Worst-case estimates of the oil spill were kept from the public, a presidential commission says.Reports are in, and the results aren’t good for the Obama administration’s response to the oil spill. A presidential commission criticized the government for blocking worst-case oil spill estimates from the public, for underestimating the size of the spill, and for not being prepared for the wide-spread use of dispersants. And those are just a few of the slaps to be found in the four reports released by the commission on Wednesday.

The White House responded, with the Office of Management and Budget denying it blocked NOAA from releasing worst-case oil flow estimates.

The commission is right that there was a random, wheel-of-fortune quality to the ever-changing estimates of the flow rate, with the only constant being that the numbers kept going up … Part of the reason for the uncertainty was the lack of good monitoring data. The Obama administration did show regrettable credulousness in accepting BP’s initial lowball figure, but there weren’t a lot of alternatives since BP was the only party with access to the well and the robot subs that could begin to take the measure of the flow rate.

In the end, Kluger points out, it’s much better that we’re discussing what should have happened rather than what still needs to be done:

It’s a measure, perhaps, of how comparatively well the crisis was handled that as the six-month anniversary approaches, the majority of the discussions are over post-mortem analyses like the new report as opposed to over how to handle a still-unfolding environmental disaster. The oil spill was nowhere near “Obama’s Katrina” as many claimed it would be. But nor was it the Administration’s finest hour. The President likes to talk about teachable moment; let’s hope this was one of them — and that the White House itself learned a few things too.

In other green news:

Coast is clear: Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar gave the final sign-off to the long-delayed Cape Wind project off the coast of Massachusetts. [The Hill]

Losing their tops: West Virginia is suing the EPA and the Army Corp of Engineers to reverse tougher regulations against mountain-top mining adopted by the Obama administration. [The New York Times]

Memory like an elephant: In trying to foster comparisons of Barack Obama to Jimmy Carter, the right-wing media is choosing to ignore that George Bush, Jr, also had solar panels installed on the White House. [Media Matters]

Back burner: New research suggests that the sun’s role in global warming may have been overestimated, but still concludes the humans are responsible. [BBC]

Labels are turned: Products will now face stricter rules before they can be advertised as “environmentally friendly.” [The New York Times]

Filed under: Climate & Energy, Politics]]>http://grist.org/article/2010-10-07-morning-grist-white-house-c-blocked-worst-case-oil-spill-numbers/feed/0oilleakplume.jpggenetically engineered cornStove pollution causes 2 million deaths annuallyhttp://grist.org/article/2010-09-21-stove-pollution-causes-2-million-deaths-annually/?utm_source=syndication&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=feed_tylerfalk
http://grist.org/article/2010-09-21-stove-pollution-causes-2-million-deaths-annually/#commentsWed, 22 Sep 2010 00:10:24 +0000http://www.grist.org/article/2010-09-21-stove-pollution-causes-2-million-deaths-annually/]]>A Nepali woman cooking over a wood-fed stove.Photo courtesy ah zut via FlickrEverybody knows that if you play with fire you get burned. But who knew wood-burning stoves were so especially deadly? According to the United Nations, stoves kill nearly 2 million people each year — mostly women and children. That’s because the stoves powered by crop waste, wood, coal, and even dung that are most common in the developing world cause dangerous indoor air pollution. Now the U.S. is looking to do something about it. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is expected to pledge $50 million to purchase and distribute 100 million clean-burning stoves in the developing world through a group called the Global Alliance for Clean Cookware [PDF], as The New York Times reports.

This initiative would not only address the health issue, it would also benefit the environment, says Reuters.

Smoke from such cooking methods can lead to childhood pneumonia, lung cancer, bronchitis and cardiovascular disease while contributing to climate change through emissions of carbon dioxide and methane — two major greenhouse gases — and black carbon.

Smoke from poorly ventilated cookstoves contributes to the early deaths of more than 2 million people a year, according to the U.N. Foundation. Malaria kills 1 million people a year, according to the World Health Organization, and 343,000 mothers died in 2008 in childbirth or from related complications, the British medical journal Lancet reported.

Maybe this will light a fire under world leaders and get them to take action on more global health and environmental issues. But I’m not holding my breath (unless I’m in the kitchen).

More green news:

Thank you, global warming: Here’s one upside to climate change: a drop in bubonic plague cases in the United States. [The New York Times]

Spies of the law: The FBI treated Greenpeace and PETA activists like sh*t. [ABC News]

Can it!: A new study says Americans are exposed to eight times more BPA than what is a deemed safe for humans. [The New York Times]

Filed under: Climate & Energy]]>http://grist.org/article/2010-09-21-stove-pollution-causes-2-million-deaths-annually/feed/0wood_fire_flickr_ah_zut_180x150.jpgWoman cooking over wood stove.What's next for the Gulf, and other green newshttp://grist.org/article/2010-09-20-with-a-dead-well-whats-next-for-the-gulf-and-other-green-news/?utm_source=syndication&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=feed_tylerfalk
http://grist.org/article/2010-09-20-with-a-dead-well-whats-next-for-the-gulf-and-other-green-news/#commentsMon, 20 Sep 2010 23:51:36 +0000http://www.grist.org/article/2010-09-20-with-a-dead-well-whats-next-for-the-gulf-and-other-green-news/]]>The life of the Macondo oil well might be over, but life goes on for residents living with the effects of the well’s disaster.Photo courtesy Deepwater Horizon Response via FlickrThe Macondo oil well is dead, but the saga of the BP oil leak goes on. Residents of the Gulf coast and the seafloor continue to struggle with the lingering effects of so much crude. So what’s in store for the Gulf? (Hopefully not another Deepwater Horizon.)

The AP reminds us that there is still oil in the water and that it’s washing onto the shore, causing problems for fishers in more than one way.

Many people are still struggling to make ends meet with some waters still closed to fishing. Shrimpers who are allowed to fish are finding it difficult to sell their catch because of the perception — largely from people outside the region — that the seafood is not safe to eat.

Like a scene from a science fiction movie, when the tide rolls in, oil is covered up by the new sediment washing onto beaches. But when that sediment heats up the oil bubbles to the surface, reports Bob Marshall for The Times-Picayune, and that bubbling crude still poses a threat for wildlife and humans.

While the most dangerous components of the oil — the volatile organic compounds — probably were weathered off long ago, what’s left still poses a mortal threat to any fish and wildlife that make contact, Overton said. And oil that was buried in sediments before being heavily weathered could still carry compounds proven to be carcinogenic to humans.

Fortunately, the Gulf was spared some of the worst-case scenarios that scientists predicted, NPR reports:

Small storms did propel some oil into Louisiana’s wetlands and onto the beaches of other Gulf states, but the big blanket didn’t come. Jane Lubchenco, who heads the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, says even though hurricane season isn’t over yet, that risk is gone.

It’s not dead yet:The New York Times reports that even though BP successfully killed its Macondo oil well, companies might still make use of the reservoir that the well was pumping from.

Experts say that there are no technical or commercial reasons why BP — or another company if BP is wary of the political or public-relations repercussions — could not eventually produce oil from the formation, which BP once estimated contained about 50 million barrels of oil. The well spewed only about one-tenth of that amount, according to government estimates.

Can BP really let sleeping crude lie? We’ll see.

More green news:

Everything old is nuke again: Turns out there’s way more uranium available than scientists thought, enough to fuel 10 times as many reactors as exist today, according to an MIT study. [Christian Science Monitor]

Glowing pains: The German government is now very big on nuclear energy as a bridge to a fossil fuel free future. Germany is so high on nukes that it’s pushing a plan to extend the life of the country’s 17 nuclear plants.Tens of thousands of Germans gathered in Berlin over the weekend to say this is a very bad idea. [AFP]

Dim wits: Here’s a glimpse of the future if Republicans win the House. Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas) has introduced legislation to save the energy-inefficient incandescent light bulb. Kate Sheppardhas more on the GOP’s commitment to freedom of (light bulb) choice. [Mother Jones]

Set sale: Could the oceans be saved by selling them to private fishing industries? Chile might provide a case study. [Discovery]

Talking dirty [energy]: Major climate talks start this week, but don’t expect any major announcements. [AFP]

Filed under: Business & Technology, Climate & Energy, Politics]]>http://grist.org/article/2010-09-20-with-a-dead-well-whats-next-for-the-gulf-and-other-green-news/feed/0bp-oil-spill-clean-up-workers-flickr-Deepwater-Horizon-Response_400x250.jpgOil spill cleanup workers.Drilling moratorium caused minimal job loss, and other green newshttp://grist.org/article/2010-09-17-drilling-moratorium-not-linked-to-unemployment-and-other-green-n/?utm_source=syndication&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=feed_tylerfalk
http://grist.org/article/2010-09-17-drilling-moratorium-not-linked-to-unemployment-and-other-green-n/#commentsSat, 18 Sep 2010 00:05:01 +0000http://www.grist.org/article/2010-09-17-drilling-moratorium-not-linked-to-unemployment-and-other-green-n/]]>The White House says the deepwater drilling moratorium will have little impact on unemployment.Photo courtesy BP America via FlickrA report released by the Obama administration on Thursday said that the Gulf of Mexico drilling moratorium has had little impact on unemployment, despite concerns that the ban would cripple the Gulf economy. An Interior Department estimate put the number of jobs lost at 23,000. The White House now says that number is between 8,000 and 12,000, and that many of the unemployed will return to work.

[Sen. Mary] Landrieu and fellow Louisiana Sen. David Vitter repeatedly challenged the report’s accuracy and noted that it did not address what they called a de facto moratorium on shallow-water drilling. Fewer than a dozen shallow-water drilling permits have been issued in recent months, compared with an average of 40 a month before the BP spill, they said.

The Wall Street Journal points out that in Louisiana parishes that support the most deepwater drilling, the number of jobs actually rose two months after the ban. And unemployment-insurance claims in three parishes dropped from April through August.

Most oil employers haven’t laid off highly skilled workers despite the ban and have used the moratorium to do maintenance and repairs on some of their rigs.

How about adding a few solar panels?

More green news:

Speed of super-light: A 100 MPG, super-light car, weighing less than 1000 pounds, won the $5 million X Prize that seeks to inspire designs and reward for low polluting cars. (GreenBiz)

Partners in clime no more: The EPA’s decision to phase out a program that has helped businesses create comprehensive greenhouse-gas management strategies came as a shock to industry groups. (ClimateBiz)

Light at the end of the mine shaft: The CEO of Austyralia’s BHP, the world’s largest mining concern, says his company will need to move away from coal if it wants to stay competitive. (Treehugger)

Shoots to the moon: If this global warming thing gets out of hand and we are forced to move to the moon, at least we won’t go hungry. Scientists are developing lunar greenhouses that are surprisingly close to usable. (Discovery)

Red light, green car: A new technology, called micro-hybrid, will bring the efficient stop-and-start engine found in hybrids to conventional cars, saving as much as 25 percent in fuel economy. (Yahoo! Green)

To roost or roast: Chickens at the Esbhani residence in Seattle.Photo: Tyler FalkAsif and Adila Esbhani let four chickens out of their coop and watch them search for bugs down the long, narrow dirt path next to the couple’s Seattle home.

The sleek new structure represents no small feat for the Esbhanis. “We never owned a saw until we decided to build the coop. It was our first trip to the lumber store,” Adila told me on a chicken coop tour hosted recently by Seattle Tilth, a sustainable gardening education organization.

“We’ve never been on a farm. We’ve always lived in cities and we didn’t think we’d be able to [raise chickens],” Adila said. “Having fresh eggs is just amazing,” her husband added.

Down the street, Kent Brookover and his wife, Karen Lewis, showed visitors around their untamed yard, where tall grasses and flowers mingle with asparagus stalks, raised beds, a beehive, and chickens nibbling small patches of lawn grass under a large shade tree. The couple has raised chickens for four years. But unlike the Esbhanis, Brookover grew up on a farm in Kansas and worried the birds’ noise and smell would be too much. That hasn’t been the case, he was pleased to report.

Lettuce plant, please! Josh Parkinson tends to his backyard farm in West Seattle.Photo: Magic Bean FarmOver in West Seattle, Josh Parkinson tends Magic Bean Farm, which he and his significant other, Shabnam Basmani, started earlier this year — in someone else’s backyard.

That’s the irony underlying Seattle’s urban agriculture scene: the city is one of the friendliest to chicken fanciers and backyard farmers, but bottle-necked as it is by water, Seattle can be no breadbasket. Unlike in cities such as Detroit, vacant land is expensive and scarce; what there is gets quickly snatched up for parks and open spaces.

But Parkinson is resourceful. He connects with people who have empty land using Urban Garden Share — a website started in Seattle that hooks up gardeners with unused yards or vacant lots. Through the site and word of mouth, the farm is spreading quickly, and more and more vacant lawn space is coming his way. Magic Bean Farm currently works on 10 spots totaling about a half-acre.

From this tiny network, Parkinson is feeding members for the farm’s Community Supported Agriculture program — people who pay in advance for a share of the harvest — along with the owners of the land he farms.

Now that’s magic.

Fertilizing the city farm

Technically, however, Parkinson has been working in a gray area this year. Until yesterday, it was illegal to run a commercial farm from private, non-agriculturally designated property.

Jolly giant greenness: The Magic Bean backyard farm is technically illegal, but Seattle code is about to change.Photo: Darby Minow SmithBut Seattle has been quickly working to improve the urban farming landscape in the city. This year was declared the “year of urban agriculture” by new Mayor Mike McGinn. And on August 16, the Seattle City Council approved new legislation that allows urban farmers (meaning anyone) to grow and sell food in all zones and on private property. Also, to please the more garden-variety backyard farmers, the city is increasing the number of allowed domestic fowl from three to eight — a much requested change.

“We found that [the code] was silent like many major cities. It’s just, we don’t address urban agriculture,” said Andrea Petzel, a senior urban planner with Seattle’s Department of Planning and Development who headed up the policy changes. “The whole point of zoning was to separate these kinds of uses particularly agriculture and industrial away from where people lived. And now the trend is, with places like Magic Bean Farm and Alleycat Acres, to bring agriculture into the city more. It’s completely rethinking the way cities use land.”

Unsurprisingly for a city that boasts an early 20th-century farmers market as one of its most popular tourist attractions, there are organizations in Seattle that have been promoting local urban food for years.

Seattle seeded its first P-Patch community garden — plots of land divided up into individual plots for gardening — in 1973, during the height of back-to-the-land fervor. The U.S. was in the middle of an energy crisis, and Boeing, the largest company in Seattle at the time, cut more than half of its 80,000 employees, leaving Seattle in a deep recession. (One famous sign announced, “Would the last person leaving Seattle … turn out the lights?”) The economic downturn combined with the social activism scene of the ’70s to jump-start programs and organizations that are still active and thriving. Today there are 73 P-Patch community gardens in Seattle, comprising more than 23 acres of the city’s precious land and feeding more than 2,000 households. (See P-Patch spotlight, below.)

A few years later, in 1978, Seattle Tilth broke through a concrete play area to construct its first garden to educate people about growing their own produce. Today, there are three community learning gardens in the city, open to the public, that demonstrate year-round vegetable gardening, soil building techniques, and composting, among other things.

And starting in 1988, the nonprofit Solid Ground has worked to provide low-income residents with access to fresh organic produce, seeds, and gardening information through its Lettuce Link program. The group encourages community gardeners to plant an extra row of organic produce to donate to food banks and other meals programs. In 2009, over 27,000 pounds of produce was donated by P-Patch community gardens across the city.

Starting from scratch

A fresh crop of creative and innovative urban-ag projects are sprouting up in the Emerald City. Earlier this year, Sean Conroe gathered up like-minded Seattleites interested in urban farming and sta
rted the nonprofit Alleycat Acres. The urban farming collective works with volunteers to turn empty donated private land into urban farms, and the produce is biked to local food banks. (Learn more in the Alleycat spotlight, next page.)

City Fruit makes sure the abundance of fruit on Seattle’s trees doesn’t go to waste. Using Google Maps, it shows where 650 fruit trees are located. Though many of the trees are on private land, you can find some trees where the fruit is up for grabs. And the group helps fruit tree owners harvest and find use for their excess. In its first year, the group harvested more than 5 tons of fruit from 100-plus households.

This year, Harvest Collective is working on an online marketplace for backyard farmers in Seattle to sell their produce. And a new landscaping company, Cascadian Edible Landscapes, is working to develop underutilized land into places that can produce food for individuals, businesses, and governments. Cascadian uses a sliding scale for fees, to make sure their services are available to broader populations.

The city is doing its best to keep up with this groundswell of people, organizations, and businesses growing food in the city while making money, feeding those in need, and finding uses for vacant, but valuable land.

“Detroit’s kind of famous right now for urban ag stuff, but they don’t have the city codes to match up with that. And that’s mostly what’s happening with other cities,” said Petzel. “Seattle is one of the first cities to really look at their codes to try to match up with what the pressure is from the community.”

According to the Environmental Working Group, all but one of the 92 Old Spice products pose a moderate or high health risk to consumers, or all those men you say smell like ladies.

And one of the products in the After Hours line that you are promoting is one of your company’s worst. Ingredients in it are linked to cancer and may harm the brain, and, yes, the reproductive system. The ingredients in that product can lead to infertility, reproductive organ cancers, and birth defects. Doesn’t sound so manly to me.

To be fair, the body wash you hold up in the commercials is free of the harmful ingredients linked to cancer and reproductive toxicity, but it still contains stuff that can harm the brain, nervous, and immune system.

So I’m asking you, Old Spice Man, please make this right. Encourage Old Spice to use ingredients that keep our reproductive systems performing! In the mean time, I’m on a Crystal.

Filed under: Business & Technology, Living]]>http://grist.org/article/2010-07-14-dear-old-spice-man-will-using-your-deordorant-manke-me-um-less-m/feed/0old_spice_man_ad.jpgWTFood: Friendly’s Grilled Cheese Burger Melthttp://grist.org/article/2010-06-22-wtfood-friendlys-grilled-cheese-burgermelt/?utm_source=syndication&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=feed_tylerfalk
http://grist.org/article/2010-06-22-wtfood-friendlys-grilled-cheese-burgermelt/#commentsWed, 23 Jun 2010 07:27:04 +0000http://www.grist.org/article/2010-06-22-wtfood-friendlys-grilled-cheese-burgermelt/]]>Since KFC introduced the Double Down earlier this year, fast food chains are tripping over themselves to slap together as many of their limited menu items as possible. In the process they’re churning out some pretty disturbing food-like substances.

You can add the Grilled Cheese Burger Melt from the Friendly’s restaurant chain to the growing list of WTFood items. This monster packs 1,500 calories and 97 grams of fat, but I guess that’s what happens when you sell three sandwiches as one (at least it’s two-thirds vegetarian!).

Photo: Friendly’s

Friendly’s, KFC, and IHOP still have nothing on SNL’s “Taco Town,” but they’re getting close. No, that wasn’t a challenge.

Filed under: Business & Technology, Food]]>http://grist.org/article/2010-06-22-wtfood-friendlys-grilled-cheese-burgermelt/feed/0grilled_cheese_burger_friendlys.jpggrilled cheese burgerWho would win the 2010 Green World Cup?http://grist.org/article/2010-06-11-who-would-win-the-2010-green-world-cup/?utm_source=syndication&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=feed_tylerfalk
http://grist.org/article/2010-06-11-who-would-win-the-2010-green-world-cup/#commentsSat, 12 Jun 2010 01:16:28 +0000http://www.grist.org/article/2010-06-11-who-would-win-the-2010-green-world-cup/]]>The 2010 World Cup is underway! Brazil and Spain may be the favorites, but superstars Kaka and Fernando Torres won’t help their countries score on clean air and low greenhouse-gas emissions as they compete with some of the world’s environmental powerhouses in the bid for the 2010 Green Cup.

To celebrate the World Cup soccer teams whose nations are also champions of the environment, I pitted these countries against each other in the World Cup draw. I ranked the teams based on Yale’s 2010 Environmental Performance Index — instead of soccer skills — to find out which countries advance to the knockout stage and which country ultimately takes home the 2010 Green Cup.

Environmental Performance Index rankings for each nation are indicated in parentheses. A lower number indicates a better ranking.

Group A:

France (7)

Mexico (43)

South Africa (115)

Uruguay (83)

Who moves on: France and Mexico

Analysis: France dominated the group, advancing alongside a decent but unspectacular Mexico side. No chance, really, for the host country South Africa with such a low overall ecosystem vitality score. And an extremely poor biodiversity showing kept Uruguay from advancing.

ICE conducted two investigations in May at command centers to check the legality of workers. An ICE spokesperson, Temple H. Black, told Feet in 2 Worlds that no arrests were made, but went on to say that if undocumented workers had been found, they “would have been detained on the spot and taken to Orleans Parish Prison.”

What strikes me about this situation is that British Petroleum can legally come to the Gulf and devastate an entire ecosystem and the economy it supports, but when “illegal” immigrants come to clean up the mess, they are treated like criminals. There’s something seriously wrong here.

Black goes on to explain the agency’s priorities. “We don’t normally go and check people’s papers-we’re mostly focused on transnational gangs, predators, drugs. This was a special circumstance because of the oil spill.”

ICE is concerned that undocumented workers are taking jobs from U.S. citizens. But BP has done more to take jobs away from U.S. citizens than “illegal” immigrants working on the Gulf Coast ever will.

Filed under: Climate & Energy, Politics]]>http://grist.org/article/2010-06-07-bp-oil-spill-highlights-our-broken-immigration-system/feed/0bp_oil_spill_beach_cleanup_workers.jpgoil spill cleanup workersPoorly timed Sodexo ad boasts ‘safer’ oil rigs [UPDATE]http://grist.org/article/2010-05-06-poorly-timed-sodexho-claims-safer-oil-rigs-in-new-ad/?utm_source=syndication&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=feed_tylerfalk
http://grist.org/article/2010-05-06-poorly-timed-sodexho-claims-safer-oil-rigs-in-new-ad/#commentsFri, 07 May 2010 03:50:00 +0000http://www.grist.org/article/2010-05-06-poorly-timed-sodexho-claims-safer-oil-rigs-in-new-ad/]]>UPDATE: Only a few hours after I posted this, Sodexo took down the video. Sorry if you weren’t able to have the same WTF?! moment I had, but Sodexo made the right decision.

UPDATE: We tracked down a file of the original video for your viewing pleasure.

Call it bad timing, tone deaf PR, or just plain dumb, but Sodexo, a “leading integrated facilities management services company” — better known to me as the corporation that provided all my crappy college food — released a new ad Tuesday promoting “safer” oil rigs. Watch the video below (especially nine seconds in):

So you’re boycotting KFC because you think its extra-meaty Double Down sandwich (two chicken breasts, hold the buns) is nasty. But you’re running late and need food now. You opt for a healthy option at Burger King — a salad (the Tendercrisp Garden Salad, to be exact).Not so fast, McFoodie. The Consumerist has a list of 10 fast food items that are worse for you than the Double Down, and three of them happen to be faux-healthy salads.

The Double Down’s nutrition line is surprisingly low: 540 calories, 32 grams of fat, and 1,380 milligrams of sodium. Not surprisingly, the numbers are being disputed, but if you believe KFC, the Double Down is healthier than:

Filed under: Business & Technology, Food]]>http://grist.org/article/2010-04-22-fast-food-salads-worse-for-you-than-kfc-meaty-double-down/feed/0doubledown_vs_salad.JPGDouble Down vs. saladBundles of balloons a new form of carbon-free travel?http://grist.org/article/2010-04-15-bundles-of-balloons-a-new-form-of-carbon-free-travel/?utm_source=syndication&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=feed_tylerfalk
http://grist.org/article/2010-04-15-bundles-of-balloons-a-new-form-of-carbon-free-travel/#commentsFri, 16 Apr 2010 04:42:25 +0000http://www.grist.org/article/2010-04-15-bundles-of-balloons-a-new-form-of-carbon-free-travel/]]>Move over Balloon Boy. Cluster ballooning’s as real as it gets.Photo: omnibus via FlickrIt’s carbon-free, it flies, and it has lots of balloons. How are cluster balloons not catching on?

Last weekend, Jonathan Trappe flew “The Spirit Cluster” — 57 helium-filled balloons and a small harness — 109 miles in 14 hours above his home state of North Carolina, AOL News reports.

“Flying a gas balloon is unlike any other experience. There is no sound. No propellers, no jet engines. No burner, no heart-thumping rotors of a helicopter. Not even the wind that gliders experience. This is true, silent flight,” Trappe said on his website. “When you launch a balloon, part of the wonder is that you do not know where you will land. You are carried with the wind, towards destinations unknown. It is a wonderful adventure, and it is the most pure form of flight.”

It might not stimulate the new green economy, but if this catches on look for a boom in circus shops and landing gear (scissors).

Filed under: Climate & Energy, Living]]>http://grist.org/article/2010-04-15-bundles-of-balloons-a-new-form-of-carbon-free-travel/feed/0cluster_balloon_350.jpgcluster balloonWal-Mart stores are littered with wasteful products this monthhttp://grist.org/article/2010-04-08-wal-mart-stores-littered-with-wasteful-products-this-month/?utm_source=syndication&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=feed_tylerfalk
http://grist.org/article/2010-04-08-wal-mart-stores-littered-with-wasteful-products-this-month/#commentsFri, 09 Apr 2010 06:15:21 +0000http://www.grist.org/article/2010-04-08-wal-mart-stores-littered-with-wasteful-products-this-month/]]>This month, in honor of Earth Day, Wal-Mart is selling garbage next to the garbage already on the shelves. The only difference is that these new products have been reincarnated into useful items thanks to the upcycling company TerraCycle. Until April 29, these kites, pots, and bags made from waste are being sold right next to the products they come from.

For example, this Oreo-branded backpack is on sale next to boxes of real Oreos:

As an added bonus, some kids might even pick up the backpacks thinking they’re full of Oreos. (The lil’ suckas!)

Find out more about how TerraCycle works from the male version of Annie Leonard:

The plan to keep food waste — more than 1.5 billion tons a month — out of landfills would have been the largest composting program in the world, with bright green composting bins at all the 31,000-plus restaurants around the world.

“To be honest, this food is better off in a landfill.” said lead researcher Donald MacGregor, from the University of California-Berkeley, on a press call early this morning. “It would get in the way of perfectly good compostable materials. Additionally, gardeners disliked the highly acidic leaching of the non-composting Big Macs in field tests.”

McDonald’s says it has no plans to reconsider the idea. However, company officials will be considering other waste management options, such as incineration and outer-atmospheric storage.

“It would have been great for McDonald’s to lead the way on corporate composting,” said McDonald’s CEO Jim Skinner at a press conference today outside the fast food giant’s headquarters in Oak Brook, Illinois. “We had to make a tough decision, but in the end I think we made the right one for us and for the environment.”

A source at Greenpeace says today’s announcement is “extremely disturbing.” The group plans to launch a campaign to get McDonald’s to overhaul its menu.

In a strange study published this week by the International Journal of Obesity, professors found that portion sizes in artistic renditions of The Last Supper increased dramatically in the past 1,000 years, the L.A. Times reports.

The study, conducted by brothers Brian and Craig Wansink, looked at 52 artistic versions of The Last Supper created between 1,000 and 2,000 A.D. The finding: portion sizes of entrees of Jesus’ disciples grew by 70 percent and the bread size grew by 30 percent. Even the size of the plates ballooned by 66 percent.

Brian Wansink, director of Cornell’s Food and Brand Lab told the Times, “I think people assume that increased serving sizes, or ‘portion distortion,’ is a recent phenomenon. But this research indicates that it’s a general trend for at least the last millennium.”

If portion sizes started rising hundreds of years ago, does that mean we needn’t worry about the effects now? Not quite, New York University nutrition researcher Lisa R. Young tells Healy:

There is scant evidence that the body mass index of people in developed societies soared into unhealthy ranges for most of the 1,000 years studied, Young said. But there is little doubt, she added, that that changed in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s — coincidentally, when portion sizes began a dramatic run-up.

Now that we know what Jesus would do — pile more food on his disciples’ plates — we have to ask, What would Michelle do?

And what a more inspiring couple to promote the event than the two-time Super Bowl champion quarterback (who looks like he was trapped in the corner of his kitchen) and his supermodel wife? Watch the videos below (and check out Brady’s heavy-handed cover-up 17 seconds in):

OK, maybe not the most inspiring, but who really needs celebs to get inspired to play in the dark for an hour? If you’re running low on imagination here are 7 ideas. And watch this truly inspiring video of cities and landmarks across the globe dimming their lights for last year’s Earth Hour:

Filed under: Climate & Energy, Living]]>http://grist.org/article/2010-03-24-celeb-couple-awkwardly-ask-you-to-dim-lights-earth-hour/feed/0tom_brady_earth_hour.jpgGlenn Beck’s survival guide: Food and energy independencehttp://grist.org/article/2010-03-23-glenn-beck-survival-guide-food-energy-independence/?utm_source=syndication&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=feed_tylerfalk
http://grist.org/article/2010-03-23-glenn-beck-survival-guide-food-energy-independence/#commentsWed, 24 Mar 2010 04:12:10 +0000http://www.grist.org/article/2010-03-23-glenn-beck-survival-guide-food-energy-independence/]]>Thinking I’d catch some of the conservative side-show after health care passed, I moseyed over to Glenn Beck’s website to find out when the healthpocalypse will destroy “our” America. But I found something even more shocking.

More evidence for Beck’s closet treehugging is coming to the surface. Colbert slammed Beck a few weeks ago for his crisis garden advertisement, and now subliminal messages for local food and energy independence, under the guise of post-apocalyptic survival necessities, are popping up all over his site.

Call it what you want, Glenn. But we can see who’s side you’re really on. Check out these ads on solar energy generators and crisis gardens:

Filed under: Business & Technology, Climate & Energy, Food]]>http://grist.org/article/2010-03-23-glenn-beck-survival-guide-food-energy-independence/feed/0glenn_beck_solar_panel.jpgGlenn Beck website screenshotGreen Oscar nominees to watchhttp://grist.org/article/2010-03-04-green-oscar-nominees-to-watch/?utm_source=syndication&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=feed_tylerfalk
http://grist.org/article/2010-03-04-green-oscar-nominees-to-watch/#commentsFri, 05 Mar 2010 07:44:21 +0000http://www.grist.org/article/2010-03-04-green-oscar-nominees-to-watch/]]>“Avatar” is on top of the world at the Oscars.Photo: Official Avatar Movie’s photostreamThe carpet will still be red at the Oscars this Sunday, but there will be a little more green among the nominees.

Leading the way is this year’s blockbuster “Avatar,” James Cameron’s self-proclaimed most successful environmental film of all time. Tied with “The Hurt Locker” for most nominations, including Best Picture, “Avatar” is the most popular green-themed film, but don’t let the Nav’i distract you from other eco-ly legit films.

For starters, Tom Philpott’s cinematic sweetheart, “Fantastic Mr. Fox” garnered two nominations — Animated Feature Film and Music (Original Score) — although Philpott still claims it was snubbed.

Two films bypassed allegory and dug into unsustainable — and shocking — food practices to gain their nominations for Documentary (Feature). “Food, Inc.” takes on the industrial food system in the U.S.

And “The Cove” focuses on a brutal for-profit dolphin-killing operation in Japan.

Nominations alone are good publicity for these green messages, but a couple golden statues wouldn’t hurt. Green … for the win!

Filed under: Food, Living]]>http://grist.org/article/2010-03-04-green-oscar-nominees-to-watch/feed/0academy_awards_oscar_hollywood_flickr_cliff1066.jpgavatarJeff Biggers talks about his new book on coalhttp://grist.org/article/2010-03-01-jeff-biggers-talks-about-his-new-book-on-coal/?utm_source=syndication&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=feed_tylerfalk
http://grist.org/article/2010-03-01-jeff-biggers-talks-about-his-new-book-on-coal/#commentsTue, 02 Mar 2010 04:25:12 +0000http://www.grist.org/article/2010-03-01-jeff-biggers-talks-about-his-new-book-on-coal/]]>Jeff Biggers talked about his new book Reckoning at Eagle Creek: The Secret Legacy of Coal in the Heartlandon GRITtv with Laura Flanders last Friday. Check out the interview:

Biggers was also on Democracy Now! to talk about the myth the of clean coal technologies that President Obama continues to promote.

A group of young activists from the Energy Action Coalition posed this question: “President Obama, record numbers of young people elected you in support of a clean energy future. If money is tight, why do you propose wasting billions in expensive nuclear, dirty coal, and offshore drilling? We need to ramp up efficiency, wind, and solar that are all economically sustainable and create clean and safe jobs for our generation.”

Obama’s response, in short: Clean energy is great, but it won’t yet meet our energy demands, and coal isn’t going away anytime soon, so we need to make it cleaner. Here’s the full text (and you can watch it in the video below at 31:40):

Well, you’re not going to get any argument from me about the need to create clean energy jobs. I think this is going to be the driver of our economy over the long term. And that’s why we put in record amounts of money for solar and wind and biodiesel and all the other alternative clean energy sources that are out there.

So I know that there’s some skepticism about whether there is such a thing as clean coal technology. What is true is right now that we don’t have all the technology to prevent greenhouse gas emissions from coal-fired power plants, but the technology is close and it makes sense for us to make that investment now, not only because it will be good for America but it will also ultimately be good internationally. We can license and export that technology in ways that help other countries use a better form of energy that’s going to be helpful to the climate change issue.

In the meantime, though, unfortunately, no matter how fast we ramp up those energy sources, we’re still going to have enormous energy needs that will be unmet by alternative energy.

And the question then is, where will that come from?

Nuclear energy has the advantage of not emitting greenhouse gases. For those who are concerned about climate change, we have to recognize that countries like Japan and France and others have been much more aggressive in their nuclear industry and much more successful in having that a larger part of their portfolio, without incident, without accidents. We’re mindful of the concerns about storage, of spent fuel, and concerns about security, but we still think it’s the right thing to do if we’re serious about dealing with climate change.

With respect to clean coal technology, it is not possible at this point to completely eliminate coal from the menu of our energy options. And if we are ever going to deal with climate change in a serious way, where we know China and India are going to be greatly reliant on coal, we’ve got to start developing clean coal technologies that can sequester the harmful emissions, because otherwise — countries like China and India are not going to stop using coal — we’ll still have those same problems but we won’t have the technology to make sure that it doesn’t harm the environment over the long term.

Obama addressed energy again during a “good idea/bad idea” portion of the session, in which he gave short responses to proposed ideas. The question was: “Do you think it would be worth looking at placing solar panels in all federal, state, and school buildings as a way to cut energy costs and put that budget money to better use?”

Obama’s response [14:59]:

Good idea. And we want to do everything we can to encourage clean energy. And I have instructed the Department of Energy to make sure that our federal operations are employing the best possible clean energy technology, alternative energy technology. And what we’re seeing is more and more companies realize this is a win-win for them. Not only is what they’re doing environmentally sound, but it also over the long term saves money for them.

Watch the whole YouTube session:

Filed under: Climate & Energy, Politics]]>http://grist.org/article/2010-02-01-obama-on-why-he-supports-nuclear-and-coal/feed/0Obama_youtube_QA.jpgSeeking sustainability, finding skeptics at the American Farm Bureau meetinghttp://grist.org/article/seeking-sustainability-finding-skeptics-at-american-farm-bureau-meeting/?utm_source=syndication&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=feed_tylerfalk
http://grist.org/article/seeking-sustainability-finding-skeptics-at-american-farm-bureau-meeting/#commentsTue, 12 Jan 2010 06:19:29 +0000http://www.grist.org/article/seeking-sustainability-finding-skeptics-at-american-farm-bureau-meeting/]]>Seattle, Wash. — Attending the American Farm Bureau’s annual meeting in the Emerald City on Sunday, I felt like a Red Sox fan at a Yankees game. It did nothing to calm my nerves when I heard Farm Bureau President Bob Stallman say this:

A line must be drawn between our polite and respectful engagement with consumers and the way we must aggressively respond to extremists who want to drag agriculture back to the day of 40 acres and a mule … Who would blame us for thinking that the avalanche of misguided, activist-driven regulation on labor and environment being proposed in Washington is anything but unfriendly?

American Farm Bureau President Bob Stallman speaks at the opening general session.Photo: American Farm BureauYikes! I was at the meeting to see what role sustainability and environmental concerns play in the Farm Bureau’s philosophy, and Stallman was giving me a pretty good idea.

With its 6 million members, the group is highly influential. It’s traditionally friendly to agribusiness, and in the past year has played a notable role in bogging down and opposing climate legislation. During his opening speech, Stallman touted the Farm Bureau’s corny anti-cap-and-trade slogan:

At the very same time that we need to increase our food production, climate change legislation threatens to slash our ability to do so. The exact level of land that will shift to trees will depend on the price of carbon … the USDA suggests we could easily be talking about 59 million acres … Stop by our tradeshow booth, sign a petition, pick up a farm cap. Our message to Congress about cap-and-trade is clear — Don’t CAP Our Future.

OK, he’s clearly not a cap-and-trade fan. So later, at a press conference, I asked Stallman if there were climate change legislation that he would support. His response:

Attendees signed a petition to tell Congress “Don’t CAP Our Future.”Photo: Tyler FalkThere are a lot of people who say the only thing you can have is a carbon tax or a mandatory cap-and-trade program. We disagree with that. We think we can move forward with a renewable electricity standard, more incentives for solar and wind energy, voluntary tax-based incentives, or subsidy based incentives, continue with a renewable fuel standard, create more supplies of natural gas to displace some of the electricity generation done by coal, research and development of carbon capture and storage to be sure we’re able to use these vast coal reserves we have in this country in a way that keeps carbon from being emitted into the atmosphere. And then sort of a Manhattan Project, if you will, for nuclear power … But all of those things could be done and put in place through government policy at a much lower cost to the economy [than cap-and-trade] in a manner that wouldn’t downsize American agriculture. So we think that’s a much better approach.

The tradeshow floor.Photo: Tyler FalkAfter all that talk about renewables, I headed over to the tradeshow to see for myself what kind of exciting green innovations are happening in the agriculture world. Well, let’s see. There’s a John Deere tractor, and of course John Deere apparel. Here’s a Stihl weedeater. I smell some ham cooking somewhere. Oh wait, look over there — an ethanol booth! That’s a start — if only it didn’t take so much energy to make ethanol in the first place. There’s a guy promoting “going green” by using propane. And another “environmental” guy who seems primarily interested in manure. Nothing organic or actually sustainable in sight. Keep looking. Wait, what’s that over there in the corner? I can’t quite see it past the glare of shiny new Dodge Rams. Hey, it’s the European Union booth!

Shiny trucks!Photo: Tyler FalkTurns out the Europeans have the only display promoting sustainable agriculture. When I tell the woman at the booth about my interest in sustainable agriculture, she eagerly loads me up with more literature than I can carry (plus all of the other E.U. memorabilia that she clearly doesn’t think she’ll be able to give away during the meeting).

Feeling disappointed with the state of modern U.S. agriculture, I decided to get kicked while I was down and subject myself to some good old fashioned climate change denial.

Before a standing-room-only crowd of about a thousand white-haired farmers, the charismatic Christopher C. Horner, senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, was there to give us the “story behind the story about global warming.” He hit on “Climategate,” global cooling, Al Gore’s cherry-picked data, and just about every other denialist argument you’ve ever heard. After the presentation a woman I overheard on the escalator said: “He was great. I wouldn’t want to debate him though. He talks so fast. Boy, does he know his stuff though.” Thank you for smoking, anyone?

So there you have it from the American Farm Bureau’s annual meeting: Don’t cap our future, don’t bother us with “sustainable” ag, and global warming isn’t real.

I’m going to put on my XL E.U. T-shirt and dream of a sustainable world, because from what I saw on Sunday that’s about as close as I’ll get.

Years later, as a first-time father-to-be, Foer set out on a three year journey to learn where the meat that we eat comes from. The result is Eating Animals.

But Foer isn’t the only one doing the talking. An animal activist and factory farmer have monologues, along with a vegan who builds slaughterhouses and a vegetarian rancher, among others. Then he weaves their stories into his own philosophical ponderings about the morality of supporting an industry that has produced some sickening statistics of late.

But wherever you fall on this issue — staunch meatetarian, longtime vegan, or back and forth vegetarian like Foer himself — you won’t look at the meat industry in the same way again — and you might even find yourself advocating for changes.

Foer talked with Grist about his book, why environmentalists haven’t done enough to address meat, and his Thanksgiving dinner.

———-

Q. Some people might look at your book and think, it’s just some vegetarian trying to tell me to not eat meat or preach to me. How would you describe your book to someone skeptical about reading it?

Jonathan Safran FoerPhoto: Gianluca GentiliniA. There are things in it that people really want to know. I, of course, understand the impulse not to want to look, because I had that impulse many times a day with all kinds of issues. If something comes on the TV about starving kids and I think, “oh god I don’t want to look because I’m not doing what I maybe should be doing.” You know all of the reasons why we can’t face certain things. I’ve heard from a lot of people who’ve read the book who frankly don’t care that much about animals, but for whom the human health stuff was just really shocking. I’ve talked to a fair number of parents who said I don’t want to feed my kids this stuff. Unfortunately, conversations about meat have historically not really been conversations but arguments. You know my book. I have strong opinions and I share them but I don’t think of my book as an argument. I think of it as a kind of story that I’m telling — about my life, the decisions I’ve made, why having a kid changed my mind about some of these things — but also a conversation. Many many people have their own voice in the book — farmers, activists, nutritionists — and I wanted it to capture what a complicated and also what a first-person oriented topic meat is.

A. A number of reasons. One, it would take many, many books to write about the entire food system in a way that it deserves, comprehensively. I had to leave so much out just in my conversation of meat in the interest of having a book that could be useful, readable. So yes, there are many injustices in the world. This is a special one. In the food system, [meat] is unique because the food is sentient where carrots aren’t and corn isn’t. [Meat] also happens to be the worst part of the food system when we talk about the environment and the worst part when we talk about human health. It deserves special attention.

Q. Did you see a lack of conversation about the meat industry, especially when we talk about the food system? Did you see a lack of information there for people?

A. Definitely. I think every book is written because the author wants to read it, whether it’s a novel or nonfiction. And as somebody who has thought about this issue for a long time, there was a certain kind of thing I wanted to read. And it didn’t exist. Omnivore’s Dilemma sort of approaches some of this but doesn’t get into it. And the same could be said of Fast Food Nation. And then there are books that are, of course, very directly about meat but they tend to be more rigidly philosophical rather than, as I said before, a conversation or a story. If such a thing had existed, man oh man, I would have been so happy not to work on this. I really like writing novels. This felt important.

Q. Food has such a strong sentimental value. You talk about your grandma’s chicken and carrot dish in the book. Do you think this is the reason people and our society in general tend to ignore discussion about where meat comes from?

A. There are many, many reasons. One, it’s just unpleasant to think about and talk about. Two, yes these emotional, psychological personal history reasons. Three, it tastes good and it smells good and most people want to continue to do things that feel good to them. But four, there are many forces that suppress a good conversation about this. It’s impossible to go to the kinds of farms that produce 99 percent of the meat in America. There’s labeling, very manipulative labeling, that discourages us from having a conversation because it makes us feel that things are more okay than they actually are. But I think it’s a conversation that people are not only willing to have, but want to have. We don’t want to eat foods that aren’t good for us. We don’t want to eat foods where environmental destruction is built into the business model. We don’t want to eat foods that require animal suffering, require insane kinds of modifications to animals’ bodies. These are not liberal or conservative values. Nobody wants this.

Q. When I first considered becoming a vegetarian, I kind of freaked out and thought, “This is going to change my life by not eating meat! I’m going to have to make a lot of changes.” How can someone who is considering becoming a vegetarian overcome that hurdle?

A. I would say don’t think about it as becoming a vegetarian. Think about it as a process of eating less meat. And maybe the process will end with eating no meat. But if Americans lose one serving of meat a week from their diet it would be like taking about 5 million cars off the road. That’s a really impressive statistic that I think might motivate a lot of people who feel they can’t become vegetarians to remove one serving of meat. So, we need to move away from this kind of dichotomous, absolutist language and towards something that just reflects where people are in this country. Once people start caring they care about more, not less.

Q. You’re very honest about your struggle to stick to a vegetarian diet. Was that your purpose, with talking about that in the book, going back and forth in your struggle?

A. It was just the truth. And that truth can be really helpful because again a lot of people get turned off by the prospect of some sort of an absolute end they think they’re not going to be capable of achieving. If the conversation were just more flexible. Of course certain things are wrong. They’re just wrong, wrong, wrong. There’s no way around it. But the goals that most people who care about this issue have are reducing animal suffering and having a food system that is respectful of the environment. If those are really our goals, then we should have an approach that better reflects that.

Q. You focus a lot on personal choice when it comes to eating meat — the moral dilemma between choosing to eat meat and to not eat meat. What about government policy? If the government regulated the meat industry more strictly, wouldn’t change happen more quickly? Is personal choice enough and where does activism come into play?

A. Well, it’s all part of a picture. The government is going to lag behind everybody else because they have to endorse American industry and 99 percent of American industry is factory farming. There have been some very successful referendums around the country. Like, California’s Prop 2 is the most famous one and also the threats of referendums which have encouraged certain states like Michigan to make changes on its own. So those are really effective and we’re going to see a lot more of them.

Q. One of the reasons you wrote this book was to become an informed parent. The food industry in general, not just Big Meat, spends a lot of money on advertisements aimed at children. How do you protect your son from influential food advertising, especially from the meat industry?

A. Well, it’s a non issue so far. But, we’ll have conversations, not just pretend that there isn’t an issue. We’ll talk about it. He might reach different conclusions. He might want to try certain things. Of course he will, if he’s at all like every other kid who has ever lived. We also need to get this crap out of schools. Definitely we need to get posters from lobbying organizations, profit driven lobbying organizations out of schools, whose incentive is not to make our kids healthier. But, we also need to reform the school lunch program. It shouldn’t be depository for all the meats, the factory farmed products, that America isn’t buying. And we spend five times as much on factory farmed products than we do fruits and vegetables in high schools.

Q. Explaining how factory farms work would be enough to give anybody nightmares. How are you going to approach that with your son?

A. Well, it only gives you a nightmare if you’re participating. To say no to it lets you sleep at night.

Q. You discussed the link between factory farms and large pandemics, Spanish influenza, swine flu. The mainstream media is always talking about swine flu. Why do you think they shy away from linking factory farms and H1N1?

A. I don’t know. You tell me. I mean, we could assume there’s some pressure from the meat lobby I guess, the pork lobby, but I don’t really know. I find it very strange.

Q. You write in your book, “someone who regularly eats factory farmed animal products cannot call themselves an environmentalist without divorcing that word from its meaning.” Do you think environmentalists have done enough to make the connection between meat production and climate change? And what more do you think could be done?

A. No, they obviously haven’t [done enough], and they know it’s the elephant in the room. They haven’t because they fear that addressing it is going to risk losing people. And I appreciate that. I don’t think that that’s stupid. I’m not one to get on Al Gore’s back for not talking about it enough because he’s doing amazing work and he serves a function in the world and it might very well be that if he got too deeply into this issue people would treat him, and the cause perhaps, less seriously. That having been said, we have to get serious. This is the number one cause of global warming — and not by a little bit but by a lot. The most recently revised estimate was that animal agriculture is responsible for 51 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, so that’s more than everything else put together. If we’re going to seriously think about this stuff we might have to risk the discomfort.

A. No. I don’t really get into the whole tofurky business. We’re going to just have really the kinds of food that everybody has — just no turkey. We’ll have stuffing and green beans and sweet potatoes and yams and all of that stuff. I guarantee everyone will go home full. I’m really looking forward to it actually this year.

Posted in Food, Politics ]]>http://grist.org/article/2009-11-23-jonathan-safran-foer-talks-with-grist-eating-animals/feed/3Jonathan_Safran_Foer_by_Gian_luca_Gentilini_bw.JPGEating Animals book coverJonathan Safran FoerNew interactive map shows devastating effects of global temperature risehttp://grist.org/article/2009-10-22-new-map-shows-off-devestating-effects-of-global-tempera-increase/?utm_source=syndication&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=feed_tylerfalk
http://grist.org/article/2009-10-22-new-map-shows-off-devestating-effects-of-global-tempera-increase/#commentsSat, 24 Oct 2009 02:20:57 +0000http://www.grist.org/article/2009-10-22-new-map-shows-off-devestating-effects-of-global-tempera-increase/]]>No need to waste your money on the new apocalypticthrillers coming soon to theaters. A new world map released Thursday by the British government, and unveiled at the Science Museum in London, provides plenty of real life doom and gloom — and it’s free!

The slick and colorful interactive graphic shows what a 4 degree C (7 degree F) rise in global temperature will mean for specific regions of the world. High, er, lowlights include: a high risk of forest fire danger in every populated continent; a decrease in rice yield of up to 30 percent in China, India, Bangladesh, and Indonesia; droughts that occur twice as often in southern Africa, southeast Asia, and the Mediterranean basin; an almost complete disappearance of near-surface permafrost in northern Siberia; more intense and destructive tropical cyclones. Oh, and the hottest days in North America are expected to 18-22 degrees F warmer.

The map also illustrates the potential effects of severe temperature increases on water availability, marine life, and sea level.

Data for the map is based on the latest peer-reviewed research from climate scientists at the Met Office Hadley Centre, the U.K.’s foremost climate change research center, and other leading climate scientists. Their professional consensus, based on a study released last month by Britain’s Met Office, is that unless we dramatically curb CO2 emissions the critical 4 degrees C mark could come as early as 2060.

(Note: To get to the interactive version of the map click on the image below.)